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Diane Passno was a proud feminist during her college years. But today she cringes at how much the feminist movement has gone in the wrong direction and become distorted.

"I'm terribly disappointed in women today ... that they're so quiet about some of the nonsense that's being shoved down their throats and they swallow it, never question it," the author of Feminism: Mystique or Mistake?, said on the Family Talk radio program this week. "Feminism as a movement is such an incredible story of history gone wrong."

Passno believes that while there were necessary battles to fight in the past such as for the right to vote and the right to have custody of children in divorce cases, the feminist movement today has taken a radical shift.

"Women feminists today are an exact replica of male chauvinist pigs 30 years ago because women today think that men are not necessary," she explained. "They are the same as men 30 or 40 years ago saying that women were mindless ninnies."

Feminism today, she described, can be defined as having two foundational issues. One obvious one is abortion. The other one that Passno says is less understood is essentially the rejection of men.

"What the feminist movement has done is it's gone from wanting equality with men to being a movement that doesn't think that men are really necessary at all."

Passno wasn't always averse to feminism – as it is defined today. As a college student at University of California Los Angeles, Passno as well as every other woman on campus found feminism attractive.

"I think it was a very freeing thing for women of my generation," she said, noting that they didn't have the career and educational opportunities that women have now. "To have very verbal women tell us that everything was possible for us and that we did have choices was a very attractive message."

Immersed in the movement, Passno even identified herself as pro-choice for nearly a decade.

But it all began to unravel for her as she studied what feminists were actually saying during the 1960s and 70s.

Originally, the women's movement had begun with Christian principles, Passno noted, as Scripture shows many examples of Jesus recognizing and touching the lives of women. But over the decades it has evolved into something "completely antagonistic to the Christian faith," the author said.

Though feminists were touting the right to do anything they wanted to do or make any choice they wanted to, women who chose the traditional path of being a homemaker or wife and mother were criticized and even looked upon as lazy.

It was not politically correct to stay home and raise your children, Passno said. Children were actually viewed as an impediment to a career or to a woman's self-actualization.

But what was most disturbing for Passno and what ultimately led her to write her book over a decade ago was the feminists' response to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal.

"Some of the audacious statements made by feminist spokeswomen during that time of national turmoil where we were examining the morality of our president and so much of what came to light, his affair with a [22-year-old intern], you would think that the feminist spokeswomen would have given the women in America some meat to chew on. And yet some of their remarks were absolutely atrocious," the author stated.

During the time of the 1998 scandal, feminists such as Betty Friedan – the founder of modern U.S. feminism – defended Clinton and opposed impeachment.

"Even if he (Clinton) did what he's alleged to have done, what's the big deal?'' Friedan said at the time.

Passno doesn't want women today to fall for the rhetoric of feminists – that success means pursuing a career and climbing the corporate ladder; men aren't needed; children are a constraint; and abortion is a choice that women ought to make.

Revealing what she sees as the "darkest secret" of the movement, Passno said women are suffering after having an abortion.

"It's a secret no one wants to talk about because to talk about it means that feminists were wrong about it. Their love affair with abortion is so important to them, they'll protect it at all costs including that lie."

In the end, Passno stressed that it is the family that suffers from the modern-day feminist movement.

"That is probably the most heart-breaking aspect of the movement," she said.